Redbeard
by Darmed
Summary: Only without the beard. And the crappy nautical terms. The crappy drama is there, though. And no, this is not related to Pirates of the Carribean in any way, except... for the chapter titles. And the pirates. Snavvy?


**Prologue.**

**A pirate's life for me.**

"God _damn _it, Barry!"

The captain stomped his left foot on the deck, trying to ignore the screaming of the female members of his crew. "How many times do I have to tell you? The left cabin is for the women aboard, the right for the men; that means _you, _among others, unless you have any problems establishing that fact, which I would most gladly help you with."

Daisya Barry bowed his head and tried to look ashamed.

The captain should have known that stuffing a few men and women on a ship for several months wouldn't result in pleasant situations. "I'm really sorry, captain."

The captain sighed. "I'm sure you are." He rubbed his temples. "Be sure to remember that next time, the sharks _will _have your precious genitals for that, whether they will find them suitable for lunch or not."

Daisya did not look happy at that comment. "Peeping would be much less fun without those, now would it?"

The captain smiled. "No need to answer. Just smile and nod."

The man smiled, though it seemed to faintly twitch around the edges, and nodded. The captain adjusted his beret and nodded also, dismissing him.

The other quickly scurried away, receiving many smirks from the other crew members, indicating that the following few weeks of their journey would be full of 'haha, no penis!'-jokes.

"Komui?"

While there was nobody else allowed to call him by any other name than 'captain', he did not turn around or show any indication that he had heard the other, but simply waited until the other was next to him before he spoke. "What is it, Reever?"

The man seemed to hesitate for a while. "Well, there's... it's pretty weird, actually..."

Komui sighed. "Get to the point, _please_."

The other's shoulders sagged. "Well sir, there was a ship nearby."

Komui blinked. They were in the middle of the ocean. On the route of the VOC. Of course a ship was bound to roll by once in a while. "Were they pirates?"

"No sir. It was a British ship, probably colonists."

Komui frowned. "Then what is so strange about that?"

"Well, you see, sir..." Reever looked at his feet. "It followed us for a while, and then suddenly... it didn't."

"Do you mean they turned around and sailed back?"

Reever shook his head and looked up at the confused face of their captain. "No sir. After a while, it just... wasn't there any more!"

"Damn it, Reever! Get to the point!"

"I'm saying it disappeared, sir."

As a response to that, Komui decided to look really brainless. He knew he did. And he didn't feel like correcting himself. His mouth hung slightly open and his eyes looked empty. "Dis... Disappeared, Reever?"

He nodded. "One moment it was there, then there was an explosion and it wasn't. Not even flames, sound or smoke – it was just _gone_."

Komui nodded in understanding, though silently he thought that maybe, _just maybe_, he and Reever should slow down on the sexual intercourse a bit; the poor man needed sleep, obviously. "We should look for survivors, then," Komui mumbled. "North, east, south or west?"

Reever pointed, and Komui indeed didn't see anything indicating that there had been a horrific explosion maybe minutes ago. Komui nodded, more to himself than to the Reever or the people that had gathered around them, alarmed by the yells of their captain.

"We're changing course?" Chaoji piped up from in between the crowd. Komui didn't say anything. He sighed heavily once, pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose, re-adjusted his beret and guided the man to the steering wheel, giving him the correct directions.

"Hey guys! Diner's – Woah. Who died here?"

All heads turned towards Lavi, the cook, who walked up front. "Dudes. Diner's ready."

"Tsk."

"Yuu, ol' boy. What's up?"

The man made a face so incredibly ugly it made the boy's eyes water at the sound of his first name, and made to strangle his self-proclaimed best friend, but stopped himself from closing his hands. "Che."

"I knew you loved me!" The boy slapped the other on his back. "So, who died?"

Kanda rolled his eyes. "Shipwreck."

"Dude, what?" The other's one eye blinked. "Are we checking it out, like, right now?"

"We don't exactly know what happened," a girl's voice came from the back of the crowd, and he waited for the Chinese woman to join his side. "We're going to search for survivors."

The ship made a sharp u-turn, and they all turned to glare at the steersman, who didn't seem to notice that half of their crew had gone from standing to sitting in four-point-five seconds, quickly reaching the spot Reever had indicated.

"But there's nothing here!"

Komui glared at the one who dared defy him and file complaints. "There must be. Just go search."

The entire crew complied, huddling by the edges of the ship, scanning the ocean for suspicious objects that didn't look anything like water or birds, some with binoculars.

Lavi squinted his eyes, still looking for something, yet finding nothing out of the ordinary boring water. He sighed and rubbed his forehead. If the ship _did _disappear, as he heard the other members whisper, for some weird, unexplainable reason, then he supposed its crew would've disappeared along with it. It was useless.

But...

Lavi blinked. He thought he had seen something, but... it was simply not possible. But there really was something there... Or someone.

When Lavi clearly saw a head of white hair, he did not hesitate and, still hearing the 'man aboard!' and the exclamations of shock of the crew, dived into the freezing cold ocean, quickly working his way towards the small boy or girl whom he saw had given up trying to stay above the water surface, before the cold would reach his muscles.

He quickly dived, feeling the water sting in his eyes and running in his nose; he couldn't see anything. He swam deeper and wildly grabbed for something, trying to get hold of anything close.

Suddenly, he felt his hand close in on something and he tried to get up as quickly as possible before he completely ran out of breath.

He sucked the fresh outside air in loudly and sighed in relief when he saw a familiar head of white hair next to him, softly wobbling on the waves, coughing and spluttering. He looked up just in time to be able to see a hand reaching out for him from a ladder, hoisting him, together with the small body, up. He kept his breath in until he felt his back hit the hard wood, still holding a thin wrist as if he would forever lose it if he let go.

Still breathing heavily after having kept it in for so long and coughing up salty water, his vision blurred and eventually, even the hand having a death grip on the other's wrist loosened as he lost grip on consciousness.

--+

"Well, he's still alive anyway."

"Yeah, thank to Lavi!"

"We know." A deep sigh. "Maybe that boy will be able to tell us something when he wakes up."

Lavi cracked open his good eye and squinted against the bright sunlight. He was still on the deck, so he couldn't have been out for that long. Next to him still lay the frail body he had wanted to save, but he noticed the thin wrist had been pried out from his fingers. He heard a strange mumbling, and quickly looked aside again to see that the – as now appeared – boy looked panicked, obviously dreaming, squinting his eyes shut tightly and mumbling words to deaf ears. "Mana..."

Lavi sat up and the crowd that had once again left their work to listen to the boy's ramblings, backed up a bit. Lavi pulled the boy up and without a second thought, sat him down in his lap, holding him tightly with his arms around his back.

In his many years as a cook aboard of the Black Order, Lavi had seen many things, some of which he desperately wanted to forget but could not. Lavi knew Komui would want to question the boy, have him relive everything that had happened today, but Lavi also knew that, just like him, this boy wanted to forget.

But he could not do anything for him; the only thing he could do was comfort him, and he hated himself for not being able to do anything more.

After a few minutes of mumbling silent, soothing words and rubbing soft circles into his back, the sleeping boy's frown eased and the mumbling slowly stopped, the tears Lavi hadn't known were streaming down the boy's face, stopped flowing and the small body finally stopped trembling.

--+

_Dammit. I promised myself this wouldn't turn out into some dramatic soap opera. The pairing is so blatant it's not even funny._


End file.
